Taleb Alrefai Reihenfolge der Bücher (Chronologisch)

Impoverished Egyptian teacher Helmy is desperate for a better life for himself, his wife and little boy, seeing no future at home in Cairo. He dreams of working in oil-rich Kuwait and its boom in construction being the answer. He manages to borrow the huge cost of a visa and is on his way there, with no idea of the hellish nightmare awaiting him.

Taleb Alrefai salutes Kuwait’s pearl-fishing history in this fictional re-telling of that fateful day, 19 February 1979, when the country’s famous dhow shipmaster Captain Al-Najdi is lost at sea in a treacherous storm. In between fishing for seabream with two friends, the retired sea captain looks back on how the sea has been calling him since childhood, on the punishing work of pearl-divers, and how he became a captain at 14. As he recalls his voyages around the Arabian Peninsula, some with renowned Australian sailor Alan Villiers, he meditates on how the sea was abandoned when pearl-fishing ended with the discovery of synthetic pearls and oil. In a kind of revenge, howling winds and enormous black waves suddenly erupt and quickly engulf the small fishing boat.